Friday, May 21, 2010

No Draut About It

Friday Comic Book Day.

Bill Draut, whose Sgt. Stony Craig I showed yesterday, was such a permanent fixture in all of Prize comics (including the ones edited by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby), that it is hard to imgaine that there are people out there who haven't seen much of his work. But then, you don't all have huge collections of Prize books.

Anyway, all that seems like a good excuses to share some of those beauties. As more artists of his generation, I belive he lost something as the years went by> So what you may know of him may not be his best work.

2 comments:

About losing stuff as time went by: You have to remember that in the later 60s, the original pages got reduced by about half. So a lot of stuff that disappeared in the reduction to print size from the larger boards became apparent when the original pages were reduced. The finished work was a little less homogenized, sometimes flaws became more apparent.

I apparently like Draut's later work better than you do...slicker, to be sure, lacking the rough edge of his Prize work. But still solidly drawn, showing a degree of care many artists lose later in their careers.

Though Seditionist has a point, much of Draut's 60s work still seems to have been drawn on large pages.

To me it seems the effect of the size change wasn't so much that drawing flaws became more obvious. Rather it seems that many artists felt cramped, and began using closer shots, fewer figures in a panel, simpler backgrounds, etc.

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